Chinese Government Holds Half Million Drug Users in Slave Labor Camps

New York based Human Rights Watch has released a report condemning Chinese govt. practices of involuntary detention of drug users, forced unpaid labor, beatings and a denial of medical care.

In a scathing report, the human rights organization Human
Rights Watch has accused the Chinese government of widespread and
institutionalized abuses against drug addicts. According to the report, at any
given time a half million or more Chinese drug addicts are held in detention
‘rehabilitation camps’ and many are forced to work without pay, denied medical
services, abused and offered no addiction treatment. Treatment durations begin
at 2 years, but can be longer, at the discretion of the local officials.

Drug users are sent to the camps at the discretion of local
police. Drug users receive no charge, trial or opportunity to defend themselves
against accusations. The majority of the half million Chinese in the camps are
heroin addicts.

Although treatment is supposed to occur at ‘community based
rehabilitation centers’ treatment experts on the ground in China say they’ve
yet to see any such facility in use. Wang Xiaoguang, the director of Daytop (an
American treatment organization) in Yunnan
Province described the
addiction clinics as business ventures run by local police – where drug addicts
are sent out to work at local farms or factories for the benefit of their
captors, and where treatment services are “nonexistent”. Wang told reporters,
“I don’t think this is an ideal situation for people trying to recover from
drug addiction.”

Prior to 2008, drug addicts were sent to forced labor camps
with other criminals. The passing of the 2008 Anti-Drug Law was supposed to
improve treatment conditions by ending the practice of labor camp detention and
calling for officials to pay for any work done by camp inmates. In reality, the
law has simply induced officials to rename the practice of drug user detention
and to ignore any calls for substantive change – and under the provisions of
the new law, officials can now remand drug users for up to 7 years.

Additional charges from the Human Rights Watch report
include:

Denying
detained drug users medical care – even those with serious illnesses like
tuberculosis or AIDS

Physical
abuse, including beatings and fatal beatings

Joe Amon, Human Rights Watch’s director of health and human
rights called for the Chinese govt. to respect the human rights of the Chinese
drug users, and declared, “Warehousing large numbers of drug users and subjecting
them to forced labor and physical abuse is not rehabilitation.”